Since the eighteenth century, many artists have travelled to the West
of England and to Wales to find a world of myths and megaliths redolent
of an ancient Celtic past.
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This section covers an area ranging from Stonehenge, depicted in Henry
Mark Anthony's huge painting, to North Wales, from the Wye Valley
to Cornwall.
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Among the highlights are works by the classical Richard Wilson
and the late romantic Clarence Whaite, who discovered
a druidical world of myth and folklore in Snowdonia.
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In the twentieth century, artists such as Graham Sutherland
and David Jones found in Pembrokeshire a mysterious world
of natural forces and enchantment, a refuge from the terrible realities
of the times.
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By the same period, a number of artists, including Ben Nicholson
and Barbara Hepworth, had established a colony at St
Ives in Cornwall - and after the Second World War this fishing village
at the far western end of Britain had become an internationally renowned
centre for abstract art.
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Artists such as Peter Lanyon married a commitment to
new techniques to a romantic vision in large canvases, which created an
entirely new form of landscape art.
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